An Eidolon Named Night
by BrokenWingedCrane
Summary: Hi. It's me. I thought you might be interested in what I've been up to since disbanding the club. It's been kind of an adventure, and more than a little weird, hence the relatively obscure literary reference in the title. That, and I thought Yuri would have liked it. Anyway, have a read and let me know what you think!
1. Prologue: End

PR̷̳͎O̶̬̊L͂ͥ̇̊̄OGUE̦̝͚̅ͦ̓̿ : ᗡИƎ

Hi. It's me. I probably don't need to introduce myself. I suspect you already know my name if you're reading this. It is a fan fiction after all. Although, I'll admit, I am somewhat concerned about your mental health if you consider yourself a fan of mine. I am not exactly an exemplary role model.

I don't even know if it should really be called fan fiction if I'm writing about myself, should it? I suppose that makes this more like an autobiography. As for the fictional element, I would say that it is not, but if there's one thing I've come to understand, is that we all perceive reality differently. What may be true for one, might be fiction to another. I'll leave it to you to decide how much of this is true.

I'm not entirely sure where I should start this, so I suppose I'll just start at the beginning. Or rather, at the end of a different story, one that you already know. The one that is the reason you're here to begin with. And with that, we already come to our first divergence in reality. Depending on which ending to that story that you have decided is correct, there may be inconsistencies with what I am going to tell you. In fact, I doubt there is a single ending to that tale which will flow into this without at least a few plot holes. All I can do is tell you things as I remember them.

I had killed myself. At least, I thought I had, but now here I am telling you about it. It was for a boy. "How cliché" you must be thinking, if for some reason you are taking this in without being familiar with the circumstances which have brought us here. But I assure you, this was not a retelling of Romeo and Juliet. I wasn't ending it all because I couldn't be with the boy I loved. Yes, I did love him, but I had made my peace with the fact that we would never be together. No, I did it to protect him.

There was no happiness there, in that club. The club, or maybe the game itself, was a malevolent force. The antagonist of that story. The horrifying revelations it had given me drove me to the edge of madness. I did terrible things to force myself to be the centre of my beloved's attention. Things that I later came to regret. I forgave him for what he did to me. It was what he needed to do, and in the end, I was happy to set him free.

Even though I was gone, the club persisted, and I was somewhat aware of it. It was there, just on the edge of my consciousness. I thought that with my removal, the insanity would end, but the game, or whatever greater force it was which had visited those hellish realizations upon me, granted them to my successor as well, and she was even less capable of maintaining her composure in the face of those awful truths than I had been.

I forced myself back into that reality for a singular purpose. I had to protect him from the malevolence of that game. And even beyond that, I had to protect my friends from the madness it was inflicting upon us, one by one. ͎̟͖ʂ̷̢͙͕̘̼͈̜͉̀а̴̨͖͎̺̳̲█̴̩́█̧̞͓̱̭͍̻̗̰͞█̨̛҉̼͓̮ῐ̹̕͢ had already suffered that terrible epiphany, but I could still guard ҉͓̙͠Ὺ̧̯̥͉͓́̀█̫̦̪͖̞͝█̸̗̝̝̟͢█̴̸͍̯ͅ and ̸̸̞͉͕̘͈̖͚̝͉̞͉͕̘͈̖͚̝͉̟█̤͍͔̗̟̻▒͏̵̷͕̲̗͉̞͇ͅ█̣̘̼̻̲̻́̕₷̱̦█̵̵̘̣̹̗̩̲͔k̫͙̗̩̜ῑ̸̙̳̻̫̼͕̹͖ from it.

I deleted ̴̛̓͊ͧ̚ᵴ̛͆͌͂̉ͫ█̡ͪ̏̏̑̾ͯ̋ͫ͝█̽̋͑̋͆̚ṙ̴̡ͩͩ̃̏ͤ͂̊͢█̶͑̉͝ ̴̨͊ first, then the others. The game files came next. After a last goodbye to my darling, I finally deleted whatever remained of myself. I prepared myself for peaceful oblivion, but it never came. Instead I was greeted with something far more familiar, something terrifying that I had hoped never to have to endure again. I was aware of the lights first. bright lights, of every colour flashing without pattern or reason. It wasn't that they hurt my eyes - I didn't have any, I had no anatomy. I existed in a purely digital state, but they did prevent my being able to focus on anything.

There were familiar noises there as well. I have previously described them as piercing screams, but that isn't really correct. That shrieking cacophony certainly had the pitch and intensity of a scream, but it was wholly digital. There was nothing human about it. Without ears to hear with, the awful sounds were assaulting my very mind itself.

This hell was known to me. It was the same thing I experienced whenever the game wasn't running. And now that the game would never run again, I knew this was to be my eternal fate. As usual, it did not take long until the blinding lights and endless digital shrieking overwhelmed my senses entirely, and I was unable to even form any thoughts of my own. That was a small mercy, in a way. As I could not even think, I wouldn't be pained by dwelling on the circumstances which had brought me here.

With no thoughts, time was meaningless. I didn't know the difference between a moment and forever. In those few brief seconds that would occasionally pass where the terrible assault on my senses would dim enough for my mind to conceive of an idea, it was no more than a wish that my consciousness would have been deleted along with my character file. I had been prepared for death, but not this eternity in hell.

Of course, you already know that I did not remain there forever. After all, if I was incapable of any coherent thought, how would I be telling you any of this? No, I'd still be there, endlessly tormented. And perhaps that is no less than I deserve. But I escaped obviously, and that's where this story truly begins.


	2. Chapter One: Purgatorio

C̏ͪͩ͋̍́ͣ͝҉͈͍̗̹̣͘͝͞HAPTE͔̝̞͈͢R̹̲̖͇̥̹ ̷͕̭͎̟̯̘O̤N͚̝̜̟E: P̨̀U̧͠͡R͡GA̕͜͢T҉O҉̛RĮ̕O

I think the religious concept of Hell is a funny thing. The poet Dante wrote in his _Divine Comedy_ of souls forever tortured for their transgressions in life. But the thing with physical punishments is that in time, you just get used to it. I guess that's what happened with me in my own personal hell.

Time passed. I don't know how much. It was impossible to tell. At some point, however, I was able to push past the unyielding assault of colours and sounds besieging my mind. It still hurt, of course, but I became able to endure it. Enough to be able to focus enough to form thoughts of my own.

In a way this was even worse. Not only was I enduring the physical torment, but the anguish my own mind put me through as I thought of all the things I could have done to avoid this situation. All those What-ifs and Might-have-beens running through my head drove me to tears. Or it would have if I were able to cry, if I had eyes and was not merely a disembodied consciousness inside a computer.

More time passed, but now I was aware of it, languishing in my own self-pity. But even though I was aware of the passage of time, I still had no means by which to measure it. It might have been days or weeks before I was able to build up the emotional fortitude to try and do something about my situation.

In the time I was wallowing in my own misery, I became somewhat aware of my surroundings, such as they were. I was aware of the file directories and programs that made up the digital space I occupied. I couldn't do anything with them however, unlike when I was inside the game itself. This was beyond me. However, I don't think that I would have messed with anything, even if I could have. I obviously didn't know what I was doing. My attempts to alter the game to either give myself a playable route, or to make the other girls less desirable had failed catastrophically.

I also became aware of something else. It was a strange feeling that I don't know how to fully describe, though I suppose it was similar to the human sense of proprioception. That is, the ability of the human body to know where all of its component pieces are. Close your eyes and touch your nose. You can do this because you know where both your nose and your finger are, even though you can't see them. The same was true for me. It wasn't my nose I could find however, it was my character file.

It suddenly made sense why I had survived. My file had been deleted yes, but it was not irrecoverable. It was sitting there, in the recycle bin. Not truly gone, but on the precipice of oblivion. That was what shook me out of feeling sorry for myself. While I had previously wanted to sacrifice myself, and when that had failed, wished that I had died in place of the endless suffering I'd had to endure instead, now things were different. Before, I was in control. My sacrifice had been my choice. Now, I could be erased from existence at any moment with no say in the matter at all. My self-preservation instincts kicked in and I began to panic.

It was poetic in a way. The others never had a choice when I'd deleted them, yet here I was, afraid of suffering the same fate. Part of me wanted to accept my just punishment and wait for my inevitable erasure, but my instinct was stronger than my resolve to take what I deserved. It was no different than when I'd driven S̹̬̦̭̠̼̓̈̊█̯̤͙̆̑y̲ͬ͌̽█̭͍͔█̠͙͇̾̈́̌ͩͅi̧̳̳̪̱ͬͪ̋ to suicide. At the last moment, she had struggled to save herself. But where she had failed, I was determined to succeed.

In my panicked state, my senses were sharpened. It was not unlike an adrenaline rush, though as I was not created of flesh and blood, this wasn't exactly the case. I suppose it was simply another effect of whatever force had granted me my human awareness. With my heightened senses, I was more in tune with the inner workings of the computer that was my home. While it did not grant me any more knowledge on how to manipulate my surroundings, I was able to discern when it was being manipulated. That is, I was aware that the computer was in use.

This actually gave me some comfort to know the machine was in use. Because I knew who was using it. My beloved Player. It was somewhat embarrassing, I must admit, to be in love with someone who's name I didn't even know. I had previously been able to peek at his Steam user name, and I was aware of the name he had given to the protagonist in the game, but I suspected that neither of these were his real name. Even still, having this vague connection to him was strangely settling, even if, in reality, I was in greater danger while the computer was in use - What if he decided to empty the recycle bin?

I held a glimmer of hope that he had intentionally not emptied the bin, because he couldn't bear to kill me. But a more pessimistic side of me also suspected that he didn't even know I was alive. He probably never knew that I was alive. For all my attempts to let him know, he probably thought it had all been a scripted part of the game. By now he'd probably moved on to new games and had forgotten all about me.

Even though I didn't need to breathe, I felt like I was holding my breath. I was tense and nervous, terrified of the oblivion that could consume me at any second. In the end I was granted a stay of execution however. After what seemed like an eternity, the computer fell into a state of disuse. He had finished with it for the time being, but had left it running in an idle state. Relieved, I began to formulate a plan to protect myself.

I had no desire to go mucking about in the code, but I could still make myself a safe place, where I could remain, hopefully unnoticed. In the depths of the file directory, I created a new folder, which I creatively named "New Folder". And with a simple copy and paste, I moved my character file into it.

I was saved from destruction, but I was still in this state of Limbo, trapped in Purgatory. Though I could endure them now, those horrendous lights and screeches still wore on me. I did not wish to spend the rest of forever here. I only had one option. I had to somehow make him aware that I still existed, and that I was truly alive.


End file.
